Hacking 101: Are all Hacking Attacks Revealed?

All this while, we have been hearing about hacking reports and how speedily hackers spread the menace. For users, it never fails to be awful enough. However, for hackers, it’s more inclined towards fun, learning and most importantly money.

Reviewing 2016, we can anticipate that hackers had a merry time. They programmed, developed and made several malicious programs functional. In addition, they managed to frighten users, be individual users or organizations. But what remains as an underlying query for many users is-what exactly hacking constitutes? How can they protect themselves from it?

What is Hacking?

Hacking in most basic sense means, technical efforts undertaken to manipulate normal behavior of a system or network connections and system connected to it. Typically, hacking involves malicious programming attacks on the internet and other networks.

Most users have a passive mindset towards hacking. Of course, many of them have been attacked and extorted for no real reason. However, when digging little deep we’d understand that there are three types of hacking namely, White-hat, Grey-hat and Black-hat hacking. Amongst these, hackers practice the latter one, where everything done is illegal and a crime. Having said that, if it’s illegal then why is it practiced at all?

How Hacking has proliferated?

The first strains of hacking were seen back in 1950s and 1960s. Some M.I.T engineers coined the term and concept of hacking by practicing some hardware programming and other older languages. Back, then, peeps had little idea about hacking and so accepted it as a positive label. However, it was soon perceived as a detrimental factor as it wasn’t help the society in any way. The hacking attacks grew with ever decade, becoming robust and more often. 1980s became a golden era for hacking. The decade had got a group of hackers with the name ‘414s’ got arrested by FBI. It was also in 1980s when the society gained sufficient awareness on malicious hacking activities and started guarding themselves from such attacks.

With that much been done, hacking didn’t see any stoppage and we had our first most vicious malware attack- Ransomware. It was surfaced in the year 1989 with the name AIDS. Since then numerous malicious programs are developed and bombarded at innocent users.

The Most Vicious Hacking Attacks?

We have had innumerable viruses all this while, but only some of them managed to spread their menace to an extent that they were popularized in no time. Some of these malicious programs include CryptoLocker, ILOVEYOU, Strom Worm, Sasser & Netsky, etc.

Amongst all, Ransomware has been one of the strongest malware program that has proliferated in this decade. In particular, 2016 was designated as the ‘Year of Ransomware’ and has seen 500% growth in its infections. Some of the most popular Ransomware attacks that took in the year include White House, KeyRanger hijacking Macs, Locky Ransomware attacking K10 schools, etc. Nevertheless, there have been some that went unnoticed, regardless of them being severe.

Attacks that went unnoticed this year

Not all attacks get the limelight. In fact, there are several attacks that go absolutely unnoticed regardless of them being major ones. Generally, it’s the targeted attacks go unnoticed. These are the attacks where once the hacker has gained access over user’s system, he’d take the information and clean away all the evidence. Further, this leaves no room for tracking and hence they never get notified.

How Can You Protect Yourself Against hacking attacks?

While technology is growing exuberantly, malicious activities are too. Users are consistently being asked by security researchers to keep a tap on your online activities as well as take sure security measures so as to avoid hacking attacks. Considering the attacks that surface today, the best alternative against them is to take a secure backup of all data. You must use cloud security to safeguard your data. For this, you can use Ransomware Protector tool and ensure absolute security of your data. In addition, you should also use ad block extensions, authentic anti-viruses and keep your software, apps and programs updated. Proactively undertaking these measure will help you have a safe 2017 (well, if not entirely then to some extent at least) when hacking attacks are expected to grow with even more obstinacy.

Author: Minal KhatriMinal Khatri is a blogger at Systweak Software. She comes up with tech solutions with her write ups and attempts to help out typical users’. Offline, she is mostly found reading about philosophies, interacting with new people and learning about different cultures.

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